A Slow Descent
by Dayari
Summary: She had never thought that anyone, let alone herself, could break so soundlessly. —Azula after Sozin's Comet. Spoilers for the Book 3 finale.


**Notes:** I wrote this as part of the drabble request meme going around on LJ, for my dear Rin-chan, and had great fun with it, although I was a bit afraid of trying to get into Azula's head at first! The title doesn't belong to me; I named the story after the correspondent song by Straylight Run. I hope you like it. :)

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Later, she can't remember much about it, huddling in the corner of a cold, damp prison cell; the bruises gradually fade, as do the various shallow cuts and burns, and although she still knows where she got them, her memory of the Agni Kai remains hazy.

(_The ever-present, breathless thrumming in her muscles, blood set ablaze with the sheer, raw _power _of Sozin's Comet burning a clear path through the sky, when she had uttered the long overdue challenge; the low clamor of something just out of her reach, something that seemed to have settled into her sinews and tendons with her mother's sad smile, clawing at the insides of her veins._

_It had distracted her, into a subtle, nearly unnoticeable imbalance that her brother had seen immediately, diving for the various openings with the cruel grace of a shark._

_Before she'd hit the stone floor of the Agni Kai arena for the first time, she hadn't thought for a second that the cool, comfortably familiar crackle of her lightning would fail her._)

It feels a bit like standing on a seashore, watching ships grow smaller and smaller until she can no longer hear the cries of the seagulls and the hazy outlines of sails blur into the horizon. It's constantly there, an ever-present nagging at the back of her mind—as if something is gnawing away at her mind, like that essential core of her is dissolving, and as long as she doesn't remember when she stopped caring, she is fine.

The fire-proof ropes around her wrists have long since grown useless; somehow, she knows that she couldn't bend anymore even if she tried, no flames and most certainly no lightning. It's like she's a bell that has been rung for the first time, like the jarring impact of the bobbin thudding through her bones has torn away what she has always believed was hers and hers alone. All the same, she thinks that those are the things that will be forever seared into her mind, the minutes after her nation's crown almost touched her head—even after the rest of herself is eroded away, she will remember the duel, hazy as it is, like a painting repeatedly splashed with water.

(_The cold, indifferent anger in Zuko's eyes when he had accepted the challenge, and for the first time, she had recognized the resemblance to their father that she had never quite seen before, the willpower, the stubbornness, and the determination. Even then, she had not thought of losing._

_Nearly sixteen years of luck had run out when the electricity hadn't responded to her call like she was used to; she had created walls of blue fire to crush Zuko between, blinding arcs of light tearing towards him like rabid whips, but something hadn't felt right. The snap-crackle of her power had come reluctantly, had felt weaker after every strike—dimly, she had remembered one of her instructors saying that one needed inner balance to bend the fury of the sky, and she had almost missed Zuko's shouted demand about what was _wrong_ with her through the ringing in her ears._

'I don't know'_, she hadn't yelled back; but she had thought it, again and again and again, until the jumbled, overlapping mess of words had become a staccato throbbing through her head that split her skull with pain when the Water Tribe girl had bound her hands behind her back. Such a simple trap, and such a stupid,_ stupid_ thing to fall for it; and she had wondered, wildly, whether the servants had already swept up the two strands of hair from the floor of her bedroom, and if there was a possibility to tuck them back on, clip them to the poor remains of her bangs in an effort to get __back what she had taken from herself—then the cloud of water had dissolved, dripping the rest of her hair into her face like a curtain, and for the tiniest second, she'd been grateful._

_She had never thought that anyone, let alone herself, could break so soundlessly. It should have reverberated through her head, clicking her teeth together and making her muscles convulse with the force of it—but it was not unlike being wrapped in a thick, impenetrable blanket, that single second when she felt something give way, a vital connection snapping like a thread. She never heard the agonized, nearly animalistic shriek that tore itself from her throat, or felt the tears coursing down her cheeks, unbidden, as if they had a life of their own._)

It isn't something that can be slowed or fixed, and so she doesn't bother talking to the two healers who occasionally visit her, at first changing the bandages every day, and then inquiring, with shifting eyes and unsettled voices, whether she is in pain, and if there's anything more she needs. Sometimes, Azula surfaces from the deep, dark waters for long enough to think that it must be a most peculiar thing to watch, this meticulous unraveling of a mind, her tranquil, slow descent into nothingness.

She doesn't know what it will feel like when she finally hits the bottom of whatever abyss she has plunged into head-first; for now, it reminds her of her stays on her nation's ships. She imagines that this is what being an anchor must be like—to be slowly dragged from the ground by the push and pull of relentless, icy masses of water, painful only until the moment of unearthing.

Sometimes, she can distinctly feel the precise, deliberate calmness of it, layer after layer of herself breaking away like old, weather-beaten bark from a tree, and then she is grateful almost to the point of tears that she has long since stopped caring enough to be afraid of what will be left.


End file.
